LinkedIn has gained online credibility as an excellent source of storing business contact information, connecting businesses to one another, and sharing knowledge with each other. Not only is it a great way to reconnect with past colleagues, but it’s a wonderful way to use the connections you already have to gain new ones.

LinkedIn can help provide inside resources a person would not normally have. One of the resources provided to a member of LinkedIn is their LinkedIn Answers page. This is a Q & A forum where members can go to pose questions to their colleagues and participate in discussions by answering questions that have been posed.

If you are looking for an all-in-one social media management tool to streamline the development of your business brand, it may be worthwhile to take some time to review Seesmic.com.  Seesmic provides a suite of social media tools designed for multiple platforms that make building your brand easier by offering services in real time.  The solutions that Seesmic provides are compatible with your web browser, mobile platform, or PC desktop. 

Seesmic Web

The Seesmic web solution offers the capability to manage your business brand in the cloud and works with any browser including Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.  The flexibility allows business owners to manage their brand through social media from any browser making it an easy and convenient solution that you can access from anywhere. 

Seesmic Web allows you to easily manage multiple accounts and contacts from one easy to use interface.  You can receive support for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Buzz, Salesforce Chatter, and much more.  The interface is offered in multiple languages with no need to download an application to your PC. 

Seesmic Mobile

Seesmic Mobile provides a suite of applications that work with the Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms and more recently, the iPhone platform.  Seesmic for Android offers an array of features that help you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, enable notifications, and post your tweets to one or more Twitter accounts simultaneously.  The Android features also include video and photo sharing, the ability to place shortcuts on the home screen, and comprehensive Facebook support and management for multiple Facebook accounts. 

Seesmic for Windows Phone allows you to customize the mobile dashboard with the features that you use the most, manage multiple social media accounts, and share photos using the service of your choice. 

If you are using an iPhone, Seesmic recently released mobile solutions for this platform that supports dozens of social media sites and allows you to post to one or more of these sites simultaneously.  Seesmic for iPhone offers a customizable dashboard which supports more than one account, multiple searches and trending topics, and much more. You can also save important messages to Evernote as well as share updates and photos. 

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop allows you to manage more than 80 services that you use to build your business brand.  With a special plugin you can choose the services that you use and then configure the updates to only those services.  Regardless if you are using Windows or Mac OS Seesmic Desktop is compatible with both types of operating systems and allows you to manage your social media tasks and collaborate in an easy to use desktop interface. 

When you visit the Seesmic website you can obtain a series of tutorials and user guides, tips and tricks on building your business brand with Seesmic, troubleshooting tips, and technical support from the Seesmic help desk.

LinkedIn is one of the largest B2B social networks with over 95 million members who are business professionals from all walks of life.  LinkedIn represents a new avenue for social network advertising and unveiled an ad network a few years ago to provide a way for business professionals to gain more visibility. 

LinkedIn advertising network is also known as DirectAds and is a self-serve application where you can create your own advertising. If you have never used LinkedIn or you have an account but have not taken advantage of the ad network, here are a few tips on getting started. 

DirectAds Basic Knowledge

Before you get involved with DirectAds on LinkedIn it helps to begin with a checklist of what knowledge you should have that will help you maximize the results of your campaign. 

• Create Ads That Work: Creating ads that are effective takes some practice and testing until you finally get it right.  Your ads should be relevant with specific descriptions and include a call to action that tells the reader what you want them to do after they read your ad. 

• Learn How to Test Ads: In order to discover what ads work the best you should create more than one ad for each campaign.  This allows you to perform a test with analytics tools to help you determine which ad produces the best results. 

• Target Your Market: The most effective campaigns will be targeted to a specific market.  This means you must know your market and what they are seeking.  Then you create the campaign to speak directly to the concerns of your target audience. 

• Learn How to Bid: DirectAds allow you to set a daily budget for advertising and how much you are willing to pay for each visitor that clicks on your ad.  This means that you only pay for the visitors you receive and the number of ad impressions. 

• Monitor, Test, and Improve: Once you have your campaign up and running your LinkedIn account will provide you with the tools necessary for monitoring and testing your campaign.  The tools allow you to see your ad click through rates so you can experiment and improve the results of your campaign. 

It is also important to note that DirectAds can only be offered in the English language as of current.  You can still target the ads to members of LinkedIn in more than 50 countries but for now they can only be offered in English. 

Since the information we have discussed here is designed to provide you with the basic information you need to get started, you can learn more details at LinkedIn DirectAds Best Practices which has great diagrams and further explanations of what we discussed in this post.

Although you are considering breaking out of the 9 to 5 grind or you have just taken the initial step toward your freedom, the reality is that when you start your online business you will meet up with these personalities online in the social networking environment.  It is not quite as bad as in the workplace because you can log off at any point and shut them out but it is still something you have to face and deal with when you do business online.

Day Late’r

This type of personality always seems to lag behind others when it comes to teamwork and getting a task accomplished.  Often they are not conscious of their actions or for one reason or another, get caught up in a routine that keeps them stuck in their ways.  Believe it or not this type of person does not mean to compromise a project. They just cannot seem to multitask efficiently and get their timing down to complete something.  Meanwhile they frustrate everyone else on the team and force others to take over the task.

Bully

This type of water cooler personality appears to be confident however they are really a wolf in sheep’s clothing so to speak and are very insecure underneath when it comes right down to it.  This type of person nurtures their self esteem or lack thereof by pushing others around and making them look bad while playing the good guy in the eyes of superiors.  This is the most toxic of water cooler personalities because it destroys the dynamics of the workplace and in the case of social networking, the dynamics of the group.

The Carp

This is the personality in the workplace that feeds off of gossip regardless of whether it is true or not.  Instead of focusing on a productive task they are milling around the water cooler and the workplace to glean whatever tidbits they can on other workers.  Some of these people are very damaging where others are just plain annoying to be around.

Stress Monger

This is the personality that usually takes on more than they should and then they stress out about getting it all done.  Other workers dump their tasks on this person and take advantage of them because they know that the stress monger takes themselves very seriously and will go to great lengths to get everything accomplished, regardless of whether it is their responsibility to do so or not.

The Bummer

This type of personality drags down the rest of the workplace with their complaining, put downs, and negativity.  When you listen to them talk it is a never-ending soap opera of events that you try to tune out after a while when you have had enough.  This type of personality isn’t happy with anything and at the same token they will not take the steps necessary to do something about it. Subconsciously they are in a “comfort zone” of being miserable.

I’m On It

This type of personality likes to see things get accomplished and is often criticized by the other personalities we described here for wanting to see things happen.  This person is positive and takes care of business and they usually do not mesh with the typical toxic personalities at the water cooler so they tend to keep to themselves.

So, even if you escape the rat race these personalities will make their way to the online community and you will have to deal with it to keep positive dynamics in your social networking groups as you grow your online business.

Did you ever use what appears to be a good recipe and then when you taste it there is something missing?  This is what it’s like when you create a strategy for each social media tool that you use for your business but then you do not integrate them together to create a great recipe.  And if you leave one strategy out of the mix it compromises your visibility and changes the taste of the recipe. 

So exactly how do you take all the social media tools that you use and blend them together to end up with a savory gourmet recipe? 

Carefully Choose Your Social Media Tools 

Some social media tools integrate well together while others do not.  Decide what tools you want to use and then determine whether they can work together or you need to create a different mix.  Your social media tools are the main ingredients that you will use to blend your recipe. 

Spend Time Planning a Strategy for Each Tool 

Create a strategy for each tool that maps out a plan for how you want to communicate a defined message.  The strategy for each tool should be based on the who, what, where, when, and how methodology. Meaning who you are talking to, what you want to communicate, where your target market is, and how you will  carry out the strategy for each tool.

Create a Plan for Integration

Decide on the message you want others to receive regarding your brand and then integrate all of the strategies for each social media tool into a mass plan for maximum visibility.  The plan may look something like this:

With this type of recipe all of your readers, followers, and fans are on the same page despite the fact they may be interacting with you using different social media tools that are included in your strategy. 

Measure the Success 

Create a system of metrics for determining the success of each social media strategy as well as the integration methodology that ties the entire recipe together.  Then constantly review the metrics and add a dash of salt or a dash of pepper here and there to create the perfect recipe.  As you can see by the example diagram, if you leave one ingredient out of the recipe it will taste like something is missing.

Welcome to Part 4, the final chapter in this series on SWOT analysis for social media.

As mentioned in Part 1 a SWOT analysis is a technique used in marketing for breaking down and analyzing the particular steps of a marketing strategy by looking at its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

In Part 2 we discussed the identification of weaknesses in your social media campaign and then we talked about creating opportunities for your small business in Part 3. In this final chapter of this mini-series we are talking about SWOT for social media in terms of identifying the “threats” in your social media campaign.

Determining the threats in a social media strategy is just as important as identifying the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Knowing what some of the threats to your business are helps you to troubleshoot and create a social media campaign that is more realistic and helps you to get around these threats. Here is an example of what some of the threats may be before you design a social media strategy. Yours will vary according to the nature of your business and the goals you are trying to achieve.

Competition

Although this seems obvious it still needs to be mentioned as an example of a potential threat to your social media strategy. A potential competitor could target the same market as you plus they may be using a similar social media strategy to yours. It is important to investigate so you do not waste time on a social media strategy that may not work.

Long Term Capability of Your Campaign

If your existing social media campaign is not sustainable this is an example of a potential threat to your overall social media strategy. A campaign that does not last for the long term represents a threat to the growth of your business and attracting new clients.

Economic Factors

The economy for your particular market can be a factor in determining threats and the effectiveness of your social media strategy. If your business is conducted completely online then it is necessary to stay on top of the online economic climate for your particular market. The same rule applies to any local marketing that you do in your geographic area.

Potential Barriers

When you design a social media strategy there will always be obstacles that will try to block your success. This represents a potential threat if you are not aware of some of the roadblocks in advance of creating a social media strategy for your business.

Now that you have an example of what some of the potential threats are that can compromise your social media campaign you can design your own criteria for identifying threats that will protect you from making costly errors. This concludes our mini-series on SWOT analysis for social media. Hopefully it will be easier for you design your own SWOT analysis for creating a successful social media campaign.

SWOT For Small Business Social Media Jump To: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Welcome to Part 3 of this series on SWOT analysis for social media.

As mentioned in Part 1 a SWOT analysis is a technique used in marketing for breaking down and analyzing the particular steps of a marketing strategy by looking at its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In Part 2 of the SWOT analysis we discussed the identification of weaknesses in your social media campaign. In this chapter of this mini-series we are talking about SWOT for social media in terms of identifying the “opportunities” in your social media campaign.

Determining the opportunities in a social media strategy is just as important as identifying the strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what opportunities are available helps you to decide how to take advantage of different opportunities to achieve maximum results. Here is an example of what some of the opportunities may be in your social media strategy. Yours will vary according to the nature of your business and the goals you are trying to achieve.

Setting Up a Profile on New Social Networking Sites

Setting up a company profile on a social networking site where you do not yet have a presence is an example of opportunity. If you currently only have a profile on Facebook then you can provide more opportunity with your social media strategy by branching out to other sites such as Twitter, Digg, and other social networking sites.

Establishing Joint Ventures

Doing your research on possible joint ventures you can create with other publishers or advertisers is another way to create opportunity for your small business social media strategy. You can create many new opportunities by finding partnerships with reputable sources that are relevant to your area of business.

Using Social Media Platforms to Offer Special Promotions

There are many different ways that you can create opportunities in social media by designing creative promotions and discounts that can be carried out on a social media platform. This provides you with opportunity to maintain your existing clients as well as attract new ones to your business.

Location of New Niches Related to Your Business

Another example of opportunity is using your social media strategy to identify possible untapped niche markets related to your area of business. By networking with others on social media sites you often discover new opportunities that perhaps you never would have considered otherwise.

Expansion of Market Reach

Expanding the reach of your market is another way to create new opportunities for your small business. By including some steps in your social media strategy it may create an opportunity for you to tap into new geographical locations that demonstrate a need for your product or service.

Now that you have an example of what some of the opportunities are that can transpire from a social media campaign you can design your own criteria for identifying opportunities that enable you to grow your business.

Stay tuned for Part 4. Small Business Social Media Strategy SWOT – Threats

Welcome to Part 2 of this series on SWOT analysis for social media.

As mentioned in Part 1 a SWOT analysis is a technique used in marketing for breaking down and analyzing the particular steps of a marketing strategy by looking at its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In this chapter of the mini-series we are talking about SWOT for social media in terms of identifying the “weaknesses” in your social media campaign.

Evaluating the weaknesses in a social media strategy is just as important as identifying the strengths. Knowing what the weaknesses are helps you to decide how to make improvements in the strategy to achieve better results. Here is an example of what some of the weaknesses may be in your strategy. Yours will vary according to the nature of your business and the goals you are trying to achieve.

Lack of Consistency with Customer Response

If your customer response is sporadic then this would indicate a weakness somewhere in your social media strategy. Perhaps you may not be delivering what your customer is looking for or you are not providing enough incentive to illicit a response. In this case you would make one change in the strategy, test it, and then make another change.

Lack of Effective Social Media Presence

Perhaps you haven’t been as consistent as you could be with your social media campaign or maybe the techniques you are using are in need of a tune-up. Analyze this weakness and then come up with a new strategy and test each step one at a time so you know what works and what does not.

Inconclusive Results

The results of your social media campaign may be inconclusive or too vague to determine what improvements you should make. This could be due to lack of testing resources or using the improper tools that do not clarify the results of your campaign.

Low Rate of New Followers

You may not be receiving new fans or followers as fast as you anticipated. This may be due to incorrect keywords that make it difficult for your market to find you. The content you are offering, or any other factors that might cause your fan list to develop too slowly.

Social Media Team Not Understanding the Needs of Your Business

If you have a social media team that is handling your campaigns, they may not understand what needs to be achieved. Perhaps the weakness is in their training, your communication, or their inability to connect with your customers.

Now that you have an example of what some of the weaknesses may be in a social media campaign you can design your own criteria for identifying weaknesses that enable you to make improvements.

Stay tuned for Part 3. Small Business Social Media Strategy SWOT – Opportunities

Welcome to Part 1 of this series on SWOT analysis for social media.

If you are fairly new to online business a SWOT analysis is a technique used in marketing for breaking down and analyzing the particular steps of a marketing strategy by looking at its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In the first chapter of this mini-series we are talking about SWOT for social media in terms of identifying the strengths of your social media campaign.

Identifying the strengths in your social media campaign will help you to stay motivated and understand what makes your social media audience tick. Here is an example of what some of the strengths may be in your strategy. Yours will vary according to the nature of your business and the goals you are trying to achieve.

Large Market Reach

Your social media campaign may have been successful with reaching a lot of people associated with your market. The end result is a significant amount of fans and followers and referrals.

Great Customer Service

Your staff is well trained in social media and is adept at creating a rapport with your customers. The result is a fast and courteous response and a customer base that creates a buzz about your brand.

An Engaging Community

If the strategies you have set forth in your social media campaign are successful you will be rewarded with an engaging and active community that becomes the mouthpiece for spreading the word about your business and your brand.

You Are the “Go-To” Person

When you become the “go-to” person for your area of business then this is a sign that your social media strategies are working and are creating success for you.
It takes time and effort to become the “go-to” person so this is a prime metric that will tell you that your campaign is right on target.

Your Customers are Open to Future Offers

If your customers are receptive to future offers and backend products then you have succeeded in offering useful content in your social media campaign. The strategies you implemented enhance the lives of your customer base instead of constantly pushing products down their throat.

Now that you have an example of what some of the strengths may be in a social media campaign, you can design your own criteria for identifying strengths that result from successful social media marketing.

Stay tuned for Part 2. Small Business Social Media Strategy SWOT – Weaknesses

Advertising on Facebook is a great way to build your fan base and although it may seem like a fast method for bringing fans and followers to your page, it is also important to get started off on the right foot by knowing a few important facts before you begin.

Effective Facebook Advertising Requires a Time Investment

Contrary to what some may believe about advertising on Facebook, it takes time for it to be effective and for you to reap the benefits. It works just like any other effort you put into your business. You must start with a plan and then invest the time to test and analyze your advertising campaign. Although there are millions of people on Facebook if you fail to target the right members you will end up with fans who do not convert to long term clients.

Two Methods of Advertising on Facebook

When you advertise on Facebook you can choose to advertise with a URL address that is outside of Facebook or you can use your advertising campaign to attract fans to your Facebook page, invite them to an event, or join your group. The difference between the two types of advertising is one will keep your fans on Facebook and the other type will simply allow Facebook members to Like your advertisement. The first method is much more cost effective and keeps your potential fans on Facebook.

TIP: CTR Determines Cost

Ad cost and the number of impressions works similar to Google pay per click where the click-through-rate determines the cost you will pay for each fan and the number of impressions your ad receives. The more people that click through your ad the lower your cost per click will be and the more ad impressions you will receive.

TIP: Use Ad Relevance

In most cases the Friends of Connections feature when you create ads on Facebook can provide your ads with more relevance. When you use this feature it reduces the number of ad impressions but targets your advertising better. When potential Facebook fans view your ad they see that their friends are connected to that page which encourages them to click on the ad to find out more.

TIP: Actions are Different from Click Throughs

When you measure your ad performance remember that Actions are different from click throughs. An Action refers to a potential fan that clicks on Like for your ad but does not click through to your Facebook page. It is important to keep track of both of these features. Facebook does not provide a place on your campaign dashboard to view the Actions but you can view them by clicking into the ad.